Monday February 1, 2010 year: 130 No. 55 the student voice of
The Ohio State University
www.thelantern.com campus
1,000 to dine for Haiti tonight
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thelantern Christmas terror Student was on board when Nigerian national attempted to detonate bomb in plane RICHARD OVIATT Lantern reporter oviatt.3@osu.edu Jonathan Mullins was supposed to be celebrating the holidays with his family in Cortland, Ohio, on Christmas Day. Instead, he was in Detroit, where he had been stuck for six hours, sitting across from an FBI agent who was questioning him about the now-infamous bombing attempt on his ˜ ight. Mullins, a third-year ÿnance major at Ohio State, was on Northwest Airlines Flight 253, the plane that was targeted in a failed bombing attempt by Nigerian national Abdul Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab, popularly known as “the Christmas Day bomber.” “I was watching a movie when it happened and took off my earphones when I heard some commotion, which was mainly just loud noises and everyone in the mid-section of the plane standing up,” he said. “The only thing we were hearing from the ˜ ight attendants and from other passengers was that there was a man that tried to light a ÿrecracker. The ˜ ight attendants and pilot repeated that to us two or three times after the situation was all taken care of.” Upon landing, it became clear to Mullins and the rest of the passengers that
it was more than a ÿrecracker. Mullins says he and other passengers were escorted by police vehicles to customs. Once there, both passengers and crew were held for two hours before bomb snifÿng dogs checked them and their possessions. About ÿve hours later, Mullins said, FBI agents began individually interviewing passengers. Though he hadn’t seen anything unusual, Mullins says the interview was very thorough and professional, even if the FBI agent and Mullins had a natural rivalry. “He was a Michigan fan, so he told me he wasn’t too happy to be interviewing me,” Mullins chuckled. “He asked JONATHAN MULLINS if I saw anyone else acting suspiciously, did I hear anything among passengers, questions along those lines.” Unable to access his bags or use his cell phone for six hours, Mullins couldn’t contact his parents, who were waiting for him in Cleveland to pick him up after nearly four months studying at Bocconi University in Italy. About that time, the attempted bombing began to make international headlines.
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Whack-a-mole with Gophers
Guard William Buford had a career night Sunday, scoring 26 points against Minnesota in the Buckeyes’ 85-63 win
KATHY CUBERT / Lantern photographer
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Austin Hylander, 19, a first-year in athletic training, won a free year of tuition by playing a ‘Big Shots’ game sponsored by Big Lots Thursday night. Hylander sank a lay up, a free throw, a 3-pointer and a half-court shot to win. No one has ever won free tuition before that game, said Carrie Snyder, assistant director of fan experience and promotions. Dustin Stinson, 19, also a first-year student, helped him celebrate.
Halftime hoops earn student free tuition KATHY CUBERT Lantern reporter cubert1@osu.edu For Austin Hylander, 30 seconds and four shots turned into a year of free tuition at Ohio State. Hylander won the “Big Shots” contest during a women’s basketball game halftime contest at Schottenstein Arena Thursday night. By sinking four baskets in less than 30 seconds, he won one year of tuition-free education. Hylander, a ÿrst-year in athletic training, hit a layup, a free throw, a 3-pointer and a half-court shot. He said he never thought he would win the tuition — until the last shot. “The last shot I had a feeling it was going in, and then it was just crazy,” he said. No one else has ever won free tuition during the four years the contest has run during games at OSU, said Carrie Snyder, assistant director of fan experience and promotions.
Players are randomly selected for the game, which is sponsored by Big Lots, and can win either a $50, $100 or $500 gift card or free tuition during the contest, Snyder said. The prize for tuition is valued at more than $8,000 for an in-state Columbus campus student, according to the OSU Web site. Hylander took a lap around the gym to celebrate after the win. Originally from Fayette, Ohio, Hylander played basketball for four years in high school. Winning the game has given him a different outlook on taking chances, and his advice for others who might have a chance to play was simple. “Just do it and don’t think about anything else,” Hylander said. “I just gave it a chance and said, ‘What the heck’ — now it turned out I won free tuition.” Two friends who went to the game with him turned down the opportunity to play, Hylander said. A similar game is offered at OSU men’s ice hockey games. There will be more opportunities for other fans to try to win the gift cards or tuition during certain basketball and hockey games in February and March, Snyder said. After Hylander celebrated his free year of school, the rest of the OSU fans in the arena had their own reason to celebrate — the Buckeyes won 81-58 against Minnesota.
More time on semester terms means more time for technology CAITLIN O’NEIL Lantern reporter oneil.97@osu.edu As the Ohio State switch from quarters to semesters draws closer, many faculty members are planning their revamped courses, and taking the opportunity to bring more technology into the classroom. “That’s an advantage of semesters, especially if you’re doing research projects or if you have to make or create something,” said David Staley, director of the Harvey Goldberg Center for Excellence in Teaching. “Fifteen weeks is very advantageous to that.” With an extra ÿve weeks in each term, many instructors say they plan on assigning more multimedia projects, requiring students to create, edit and publish their own videos. “We’ve had faculty [using] digital narratives as assignments, and that’s something we’re looking to expand,” Staley said. “That’s students taking video and image and sound and mixing them as new digital narratives. We’ll be doing this next quarter … and we’ll have more of that as the transition comes. Semesters give the opportunity to launch these sorts of initiatives.”
Doug Dangler, associate director of the Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing also anticipates a push toward video and visual technology in the future. “You’ve been seeing the rise of video for a while. You can’t go to MSNBC and not see a video embedded in their page,” Dangler said. “All of these places are having this move towards telling a story in different ways. I don’t think that has a lot to do with the semesters, but it gives you the time to explore it in more depth.” Dangler said some “new media” outlets such as Facebook have only recently become widely accepted media, but it has yet to be determined how they can effectively be used in a university setting. “A lot of this stuff is still up in the air: what we will do and how we will respond,” Dangler said. “In our area, we are always interested in taking media, taking students, teaching them the different kinds of media, and helping them become acclimated to the demands they will face in the marketplace and at their jobs.” At OSU, 93 percent of all undergraduate students
have at least one course registered in Carmen. Because of the Registrar’s Classroom Readiness Committee, nearly all classrooms on campus were equipped with multimedia technology last summer, including computers with the ability to host video conferences. But technology in the classroom is nothing new, said Victoria Getis, director of the Digital Union, citing an engineering lab used to develop iPhone applications, along with the university-supported “wiki space” called Carmen wiki, where students can write and collaborate on entries for speciÿc courses. Getis said more instructors have been using interactive white boards, known as smartboards, to get students involved in the classroom. Instructors write directly on the high-tech board with a pen tipped with an infrared light. The notes can be saved and uploaded on Carmen as an electronic document. Getis said the technology also lets students play back the notes as they were written, to help them see how the instructor worked out the problem on the board. Getis also said that when Apple releases its recently announced iPad, the university will be sure to be one of the ÿrst to get it.
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